Stop Having Fun Guys - Television Tropes & Idioms

This blog post is a two-page essay that literally denounces the very idea of having fun as “an exercise in self-nullification.” The gist of the post is that if you're playing a game for instant fun, you are doing it wrong.
Despite its points about having fun by playing this way, and although the book later advocates mixing it up a bit and playing for fun too, fun by playing to win; the way it describes scrubs actually puts the Stop Having Fun Guys man in the same category-by creating arbitrary and confining rules on gameplay. Admittedly the Stop Having Fun Guy knows all the words and doesn't have to resort to calling every tactic cheap to get his whiny, petulant point across, but he's still a scrub according to the article.

Close Meta

A special mention must be given to those who play Super Smash Bros. As a Mascot Fighter, the gameplay revel in chaos and unpredictability. Items spawn all over the place, the very shape of the stage can change, and some areas of some stages can even hurt you. Naturally, some gamers who play in tournaments want this all gone to remove the luck factor, but some take this way, way too far. For example, in Melee, rather than playing in the labyrinthine “Temple,” or the frequently shifting “Brinstar Depths” the type of gamer described here plays only in the static “Battlefield,” or the completely featureless “Final Destination,” with no items, to remove all the luck factors. The sheer number of options available (and passed over by this type of player) really polarizes the series' fandom. Not really a problem, to each his own right? Wrong. You can't go into any Smash discussion without flame wars about how the game is to be played properly with some people claiming that items are for noobs and using automatically proves that the player isn't as good as the tournament players. To them, anyone who doesn't play like them only care about some Flanderized notion of “playing-for-fun” and don't play the game like it's “supposed to/properly/more effectively played”.
- Melee had people argue over the use of C-stick! Some believed that anyone who used the C-stick to use a smash attack was a scrub or a n00b, just because it was easier to do. Coincidentally, this argument only sprung up after a Nintendo Power article asserted that there was a major debate as to the validity of using the C-Stick.
- A quick explanation of the picture above: the stages in red are generally banned in tournaments. The stages in yellow are only available after the first match of a best 2/3 set or by player agreement. The stages in green, the ones you can count on your fingers, are set to random select for the first round. For the two that are two-tone, they're banned in team play since they lag too much with 4 players at once.
- NO ITEMS! FOX ONLY! FINAL DESTINATION!
- This Troper often laughs at those who call out Nintendo for putting trips into Brawl, because it "allows a less skilled player to win." Honestly, if you lose because you can't move for a half second, you were going to lose anyway.
- This Troper hates trips not because they can decide who wins a match, but because they're simply annoying as all hell.Way too often have I tripped when I'm about to do something awesome, and it's just so annoying.
- Seconded. Long story short, fun is subjective. There's nothing wrong with skill-oriented competitive play if you enjoy it. But arrogant players who act like there's only way to play Smash ever are annoying as all get-out. Now enough with the stereotypes.
In Street Fighter, you'll have those who sneer at players who chose Ryu And Ken, because Akuma (who is banned in most tournaments) is “So much better.”
- Street Fighter III has its own version of this guy. You know, the one who shows off his elite ability to parry anything and scoffs at anyone who comes at them with nothing less.
  - You can occasionally find players like this in arcades preying on new players, scoffing at and ridiculing their lack of skill while reveling in what is sure to be an easy victory, using overwhelming force with the intent of humiliating the other player. When playing people like that, it is very easy to be turned off from the game.
- Ah, speaking of Street Fighter, several years back a tournament-level player by the moniker of Sirlin wrote an article called “Playing To Win,” the upshot of which is, if you're not playing a game at a cut-throat competitive level, you're not worthy to talk about it or venture an opinion on it. It has a few thought provoking points, but the arrogance of the piece kind of eats away at that. Later on he wrote a longer multi-chapter version which is slightly more balanced, but still comes out as “Don't complain if your fun is being ruined, that's the way it's supposed to be.”
  - Note: One of Sirlin's followups (and the book he wrote) also post an inversion. “If you're too serious, you'll be too stubborn to try any new winning tactics.” Heck, he once beat the supposedly “best Chun-Li player” in an Alpha 2 tournament by picking an underrated character and performing a crouching strong for 60 seconds.
  - Not only that, but Sirlin really wasn't arrogant in the piece; the only possible arrogance was when he derided scrubs for banning "cheap" tactics before working out how to get around them, and how easily people label things game-breakers. That isn't particularly arrogant; it's more along the lines of a professional sports player saying "rec teams aren't teaching players of *insert sport* good habits." He also states that playing to win only applies at competitive levels and that if you just want to have fun, by all means use a game breaker, mess around, or go easy on the noobs.
  - He sounds like most of the people on the TF2 Steam forums. On the rare occasion people actually use logic and sense rather than blind opinion in an argument, it's immediately nullified with "lol stfu i have more hours noob!" The general consensus is 100 hours on a class being the absolute minimum to be allowed to have an opinion about it, but it really depends on whether or not you have less hours than whoever you're currently arguing with.
  - There's a bit of a difference there; in TF 2 the more hours argument is made by players who are not at a competitive level and don't really have anything to back up their skills besides playing a lot, which is correlative to higher skill [sometimes]. Sirlin has proven his skill at the game by winning tournaments, so it is pretty reasonable that his opinion on a game is worth more than the opinion of a casual player who thinks supers are unfair and throws are gamebreakers
Pretty much any fighting game that has characters with a move that can be used over and over again, such as Chun Li's Lightning Kick or Pit's arrows. When it comes to spamming moves, they're either cheap and take no skill or they are a part of the game and it is your fault if you get caught in the spammed attacks.
- In a game where SINGLE FRAMES OF ANIMATION matter, lag in an online game is murder. Soul Calibur 4 is guilty of this, notably Sophitia/Amy's speed, where having a lagging connection basically means “put down the controller and go get a soda to make yourself feel better.” The “pros” on forums will tell you to quit whining and sidestep or “learn to block,” but when the lag is so bad your character doesn't respond at all to your frantic mashing of the G button, well…
  - Hold G to block.
  - Nevertheless, the point is that rather than recognize the actual issue (the lag or whatever the case maybe), SHF Gs will more often than not tell someone to play through (or fix) something that inherently beyond the players control and that is beyond disadvantageous in a normal environment.
Guilty Gear fans will often scoff at you for not knowing basic blockstrings and combos, even though many of what they term “basic” require a fair amount of practice (ideally on a home system) to get down pat.
- To be fair, Guilty Gear is a lot milder case than the rest. While it is true in order to be taken seriously you will have to know combos, this troper has found that many a guilty gear player will gladly come down your level and try to win with shenanigans. In addition, the game is much more balanced than most fighters, to the point that choosing a bottom tier character will be met with a, “Huh? Don't see many people use him.” Rather than, “Don't you know he sucks?! Why would you choose such a worthless character?” It has also been this troper's experience that the ones who are physical embodiments of stop having fun guys are not very good at this game anyway.
- Players of fighting games generally only do this if someone who isn't up to standard claims to be the best player ever or something to that effect. Only then do they receive the flames of the better players who really have no patience for yet another newbie who thinks (s)he's the best/can even emulate top play with the standard they're at now. In my experience, fighting game players are generally OK with less skilled players or those less knowledgable about the game.
  - That is not true for so many reasons. You wouldn't believe the number of flames I've gotten on X Box Live and in real life for simply LOSING to someone better at game X than me. Torrents of smart ass remarks and insults for having the temerity to say "good game man." I am always polite and respectful in these kinds of things, win or lose, but generally, the people with skill levels above mine are worse winners than the less skilled are losers. Among many skilled players, the attitude is "if you don't have at least their level of skill, you shouldn't even be playing the game." I've seen con tournaments ruined and nearly cancelled because none of the participants were EVO quality and the tourney organizer spent the whole damn tourney insulting the participants. And let's not even get started on actually BEATING one of these guys: article author left out one of the defining characteristics of SHFG's: they're all about glitches, cheats, hacks, that sort of thing, until you find a way around them. When the SFHG guy is the only guy with the edge, the game is perfect, logical, a beautiful thing. As soon as you figure it out/get a better edge of your own, the game is broke and you're a cheater. Ultimately I wind up having more respect for the low/average level players, because they're more likely to be better losers, and when they start winning, they don't let it go to their heads.

Close Fighting Games

The freeware game Netbattle lets people create Pokemon teams with any movesets and optimized stats, then battle their customized teams online. If you use a moveset that isn't up to the Stop Having Fun Guys' standards, even if you're not playing against them, you will be told how much your team sucks just because you're doing it wrong. If you use a one-hit KO move like Sheer Cold, you will be shunned and scoffed at for relying on a pure luck/n00b tactic. Some people even end the match prematurely if you use said moves or the moves actually hit (they only work 30% of the time, hence the huge luck). Players even go so far as to outright ban items like Quick Claw, because it upsets the “balance.”
- Penny Arcade has the story of how Gabe took the mickey out of a larval-stage SHFG. Also a follow-up post showing why if you are a parent of a young child, you should never, ever let him or her attend an officially sanctioned tournament.
You're not allowed to run from a battle in a JRPG. Ever. It doesn't matter whether the enemy's kicking your ass hard and it's been hours since you used a save point, you're in a real-life hurry to get to a save point, or the enemy is so weak that there's no point in fighting it for what little spoils you'll gain. If you run from battle, you are a complete RPG Scrub who is on the same level as child molesters and people who talk in the theater.
- Unless you are playing Etrian Odyssey. The labyrinth is filled with the corpses of those fools who never ran away from too powerful FOE. People who whine about players fleeing in a JRPG just didn't get to this game yet.
- Some RPGs actually give you prizes for having not run from any battle, probably inspiring this problem.
  - Conversely, Kingdom Of Loathing gives you a trophy for running away from 100 battles in a row.
  - Likewise, Suikoden II requires you to run from 50 battles in order to recruit one of the characters.
  - Final Fantasy VII requires escaping from battles to power up an enemy skill, Chocobuckle.
- In Final Fantasy I, your options are to either learn what you can handle and what you need to run from, or grind until you're stronger than everything anyway. Being knowledgable about your enemies and knowing what to do in each situation most certainly makes you more skilled at the game than levelling for 10 hours, then hammering A a lot in each battle.
There is only one party setup worth using. Every other combination of characters is absolutely worthless. Unless you specify otherwise, everyone will always assume you're using that party.
- Very true in the Final Fantasy Tactics series. Using a Gadgeteer/Tinker? You're an idiot for using a "garbage" class. Using Chocobo Knights? Switch his class or boot him from the clan. No matter how much you try to defend your decisions on what classes you use and how you use them, the "expert" players will just lecture you on how the other classes are so much better than what you use, despite the fact that Advance and A2 is pretty easy to beat with almost any class set up you use.
- This one actually splits in two separate ways: there's the aforementioned section of JRPG fandom who will reject using anything except the most awesomely broken options... but then at the other extreme there's a set of [[Scrubs]] who will sneer at anyone who's crappy enough to "need" all the best stuff to win, in effect declaring SelfImposedChallenges the only valid way to play. Apparently if you're not playing through the game as a level 1 solo Joke Character without equipment you suck and have no business playing it.
And then there are the WRPG purists, who insist that JRPGs are “for weeaboo faggots who only watch animu” and constantly belittle anyone who plays them.
And God forbid you ever die. Because there are gamers out there who have never needed help on, needed to run away in, or died in a JRPG.
/Simulationism) article by indie creator Ron Edwards.
- A perfect example of what happens when you mix this with Fan Dumb is shown here/
Do you want to have fun playing RP Gs? James Raggi considers you inferior.
- "Inferior" is perhaps too nice a word; "the scum of the earth" is a more accurate way of putting it.
  - He put up an edit to the article insulting anybody who was linked to it from this wiki. I was amused.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 has a small, but vocal pool of these which will stop at nothing to make the ultimate team. The general consensus is that speed is the most important stat, so leveling up must be done with a fast class regardless of any other factors (like how annoying it is to use some classes). The sad part there is that the game is perfectly beatable without all those measures and there is no multiplayer in the game.
- Even Final Fantasy Tactics Advance fell under the EXACT same problem. If you went around and asked how to optimize your team, you would always be told Speed > everything and doing anything else like casting Holy or inflicting Frog status was just a waste of time compared to something like Last Breath. On top of this, Video Game Cruelty Potential kicks in for poor Montblanc, the Black Mage Moogle. Most “pro” players will be appalled at anyone who has Montblanc in their team and will tell people to get rid of him since he is a poor magic user and everyone else outclasses him in magic. The game won't let you boot him from the clan, so everyone tells you to go kill him in a Jagd.
You don't have level 9999 characters that have transmigrated 20+ times in Disgaea? Pathetic! Also any character caught not using a lvl 100 Yoshitsuna and 3 lvl 100 Super Robo Suits will be summarily deleted (Disagea HOD/AOD).
When faced with a party of Munchkins, a game of Dungeons And Dragons can turn into this very quickly. Woe to you if you happen to have a character who is not min-maxed up the arse.
Or, in a reverse of the D&D example, with some groups, playing a World Of Darkness game and wanting to do other stuff then sulk and while about how terrible life is when you are Cursed With Awesome. ie: Wanting to go out and kick ass rather than brood in a corner. This is like midway between this trope and the scrubs.

Close Role Playing Games

Honorable Mention goes to the various “real musicians” who tell players of games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band that they should stop playing video games and learn a real instrument. Most of the time, however, these people fail to realize that these games do not just emulate playing an instrument, but the entire rock star lifestyle, which would normally be extremely improbable to obtain in real life regardless of how well one can play a real guitar. This xkcd strip is the Trope Namer.
- The same attitude is mentioned in the second panel of this Basic Instruction.
Using the safety bar on a Dance Dance Revolution machine is a matter of debate. Some say it's legitimate, that it's nowhere near hacking the game so you get a Perfect on every step, while others say that using the bar to beat That One Boss with a perfect score is less of an accomplishment than barely passing a beginner-level song without it.
- There are some players (this Troper included) who began playing DDR in console form, beginning with 1st to 3rd Mix. No speed mods, no safety bar. Obviously, this leads to them looking down on those players who hold onto the safety bar all game long (even calling them “strippers,” by some stretch of the imagination).
  - Strippers, you say? Thanks for the mental images...
  - This troper knows a few people who call them "bar-rapers." However, these people aren't really SHFGs.
- Similarly, using Hyper Speed in Guitar Hero is said to be a form of cheating by some players, even though in other music games (such as Beatmania IIDX and Pump It Up), players use speed multipliers without question. Some players will go as far as to say that no matter how difficult a song is, beating it doesn't count if you use Hyper Speed, never mind that Hyper Speed is the only “cheat” under which scores can be saved and that the Guitar Hero ranking site Score Hero accepts scores achieved with Hyper Speed, that the same is true for the official leaderboards and many other competitions and events, that pretty much every single last Expert player uses it, and that Guitar Hero spiritual successor Rock Band has significantly increased the scroll speed on Expert precisely because of how useful is hyperspeed in making note charts more readable. Also, Rock Band 2 is to have further hyperspeed options available outside of cheats.
- Also, it doesnt help when most of them design songs to be mostly on heavy. Some of us just don't got the endurance or reflex to pull is it off
  - By the way: mentioning that hyperspeed is “cheating” on the Score Hero forums is a good road to a Gannon Ban. That's how dead this horse is.
- One can find one or more playthroughs of Guitar Hero II on You Tube which list in the title “no cheats” by which it is explained further that Star Power is never deployed. Line up on either side of this debate as you please.
  - Star Power triples the rate at which your Rock Meter recovers. To some Rhythm Game purists, it's rather hypocritical that a modifier that spreads out and speeds up notes while doing nothing else is called cheating, while a powerup that allows you to easily get through the most difficult of songs without as much effort isn't.
  - From people who have never played a Guitar Hero game ever, maybe. Building up the Star Power gauge essentially requires a full combo through certain sections of the song. (Without a full combo, you still build up some power, but it would take a while to get to Star Power levels.) Nobody in their right minds would claim that this qualifies as "easily getting through the most difficult of songs."
  - Star Power also doubles your multiplier, so not using Star Power basically makes it impossible to get a good score. Seriously, to this troper, not using Star Power is like playing Super Mario Brothers without using the B button, due to the fact that it's “cheap.”
  - Except, some people play for accuracy rather than points.
- Stepmania in relation to this is notorious for having most of the producers making only heavy/challenge stepfiles. This troper had a good reason to stop playing benami games due to the sheer impossibility of it all.
- Pump It Up (Korea's dancing game counterpart) settles the bar issue by having all official tournaments forbid the use of the bar during speed (accuracy) competitions. Most local tournaments follow suit.
You're not allowed to play pop'n music with the Beat-Pop modifier. After all, if you want gray and blue notes so badly, why not just play beatmania IIDX?

Close Rhythm Games

Second Life. Yes, there are people who take this seriously. When it comes to using weapons, there seems to be a rule among Second Life members that you are not allowed to use "n00b weapons" (guns gotten for cheap or free). Never mind the fact that the good things cost lindens (Second Life's currency) and to get more, you have to pay with real money, which some people can't do.
- Speaking as a long time DJ on second life. No you don't have to pay real money to get Lindens (the second life currency) Also, the reasoning for the non-use of free guns generally boils down to "they're poorly scripted and cause lag or spam bullets to the point where it's unfair to use." Weather this is true or not is up to debate, but those seem logical reasons to me and thus not under the trope.
City Of Heroes (and its counterpart game, City of Villains) have a couple archetype combinations and maps that get used extensively by the twink crowd. In City of Heroes, it's Fire/Kinetics Controllers that are viewed as the “most powerful”, with two maps that get used. Both are outdoors in an urban setting and have all the enemy groups in relatively straight lines, with the key difference between them being either Family or Demons as the enemy type. City of Villains is a bit more complex due to the lack of a completely self-sufficient, overpowering archetype combination, but the popular choice is to pair an (area of effect emphasis)/Stone Armor Brute and a (area of effect emphasis)/Kinetics Corruptor (popular combinations are Super Strength/Stone Armor and Fire Blast/Kinetics). The map of choice is “Battle For Television,” an outdoor urban map that mixes Family and Nemesis. They will then set up teams (usually capped to 6 out of the 8 possible to prevent Boss level spawns) and “farm” it, just clear the map without completing the objectives, reset the map, and repeat. While this is a very effective way to gain money, it is extremely monotonous and many of the people that set these up are also completely passionless and very strict about the conduct of the “team fillers,” with the most extreme of them not even letting them on the map to share the rewards (though even these ones usually tell you ahead of time, and let you leave once all the enemies on the map are spawned). Then there are the people that refuse to do anything but this type of team...
- This section of the playerbase also relentlessly pursues and abuses other exploits for risk-free experience.
- Note that, unlike several of the games detailed here, these players aren't in the majority among CoH and CoV's playerbase. It's easy to find and fill teams that aren't playing this way.
  - And despite them being a minority, they're the reason the experience and money rewards from 40+ Family were reduced. And why the outdoor missions with Warwolves got time limits. And why Rikti Comm Officer portals no longer give rewards. And why creatures spawned from any portals at all do not give rewards. And why the Welcome to Vanguard arc no longer gives rewards. And why...
- There are also milder examples; far too many 'serious' players will never team with a Storm Summoner or Trick Archer by choice, and generally avoids Kheldians like the plague.
  - To be fair, having a Kheldian on your team means you can get a Shadow Cyst Crystal hidden in one of your spawns in the mission. This thing will spit out a bunch of enemies as soon as you charge in, effectively putting your team against a double-sized spawn. In my experience, a Shadow Cyst was always a teamwipe if you didn't notice it, and sometimes wiped you even if you did. (Oh, and Stormies are friggin' sick if used by players who know what they're doing)
- And then there's the Katie Hannon Task Force. It's a short, fun task force; because it's short and because the rewards were the same as for the longer task forces, it was very commonly run, to the point where players have the precise mechanics of how to complete it quickly down to a science. The Imperious TF is looking like it's headed that way as well. There's also “Speeden,” which has been completed in under 5 minutes. Of course, due to the same player as mentioned above.. the Merits system devalued the "ultra-fast" T Fs that were down to a science.
- And now that we have the Invention system implemented, expect any player that doesn't use and abuse it to twink out his character to ridiculous levels to be mocked mercilessly by the usual suspects.
- This troper notes that the opposite is also true in many cases. More than one of the extreme roleplayers or casuals within City of Heroes or Villains has seen on the forums or in game to essentially demand the devs not only ban farming, but delete the farmer's characters, force them to play the way roleplayers and casuals play, and have an amazing mental ability to block out the very possibility that anyone could possibly have fun twinking out a character or running the Taskforces in anything less than 2 hours.
  - In a recent flame war (started by the head dev no less) brought this interesting fanbase to light when he told them that the newly implemented Mission Architect was intended to be for players who want their own personal storyline more accessible and not for "badge hunters" or "farmers". Of course, Mission Architect had a crazy amount of badges tied to it and an auto-level system (bringing new toons into the farms which were previously dominated by level 50 characters). Add a bugged critter, and watch the fire burn. For those of you who don't understand this, it's basically telling the Stop Having Fun Guys to stop having fun. I think the universe breaks there somewhere.
  - And the fire continues to burn. One of the other devs recently announced they are deleting over 80 of said "farmable" badges from the Architect, citing that they had never intended for players to earn high count badges in any way except through years upon years of playtime, and that from now on any new badges would follow an entire new design scheme for rewarding. Of course, when quite a few people got angry over this, the topic quickly rebuilt into another flamewar as now the Stop Having Fun Guys, the Stop Having Fun you Stop Having Fun Guys, and even a lot of the Story Writers themselves or people who had gotten most of those badges legitimately started arguing over the issue, leading to even more of a massive fight where every side is absolutely convinced every other side doesn't deserve to have fun their way. Oi.
One of the game mechanics introduced during the development of Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates was the blockade system, in which multiple flags of pirates could take part in a large-scale naval battle/capture the flag game to earn the right to colonize and build property on various islands. Eventually, one player came up with an unpopular strategy to wage war for these islands, consisting of raising enough money to wage multiple wars, scheduling them so they took part in the early morning, not showing up to battle, and repeating this every week. The defending army couldn't refuse to show up; if he or his crew showed up and they didn't, it counted as a win on his side, giving him a chance to take the island. So the defending army showed up every week and did nothing but keep the ships afloat for several hours. In the end, many agreed that keeping the island was turning into a second job and was no longer fun, and a number of players got fed up with the game and quit. The responsible pirate called this “tactics.” And although early-morning assaults is in fact a valid tactic in real warfare, it fails to factor in the fact that this is a game, and as such the fun factor is as much a part, if not more so, than victory.
- Said pirate was ultimately given a lifetime ban.
  - This troper had seen a similar argument for the issue of camping in FPS games. One person argued that camping is a legit strategy because it is used in a real life warfare to coax the enemy to come out of hiding so they can shoot them.
If you aren't willing to put up with the restrictions and are willing to invest a lot of time into it, forget about two things in World Of Warcraft:
- Raids (groups of up to 40 people), the pinnacle of Pv E gameplay. Okay, the entry level is easy enough for less organized people, but good luck getting past that. This kind of gameplay doesn't exactly require a lot of skill from the individual, but there is absolutely no room for experimental setups in the minds of many.
- Arena, a small scale Deathmatch and the pinnacle of Pv P gameplay. Once again, if you want to get anywhere, you need a specific group setup, a solid tactic based on that and good communication during the matches (voicechat). If you play for fun, you quickly fall down the ladder and are unable to get most of the rewards available for this type of gameplay.
  - And there is a very vocal group of players who believe you don't deserve any sort of advancement if you don't participate in either of these aspects. Never mind the fact that, as mentioned, raids don't necessarily require skill, and that neither are particularly fun at their upper tiers primarily due to the high volume of these people at that level.
  - When 10-man raids were first announced, there was a huge uproar from the hardcore raider crowd. Some arguments against the change were reasonable, but many other arguments basically boiled down to: "You're not allowed access to this type of content because we say so."
  - With the advent of the Armory, allowing anyone to see you characters full Gear/Talent spec and achievements this has reached insane levels. Typicaly the second post on a forum thread will be someone invalidating the O Ps opinion cause of their armory stats. Its particularly bad in Pv P were any opinion will ahve someone insult your arena ratings.
  - Hardcore players tend to boast their skills by comparing their gear to another player who has lesser gear that the former, nevermind the latter player is a casual who had to juggle between life and World Of Warcraft.
- HOW on EARTH have you guys NOT managed to mention the infamous 50 DKP Minus person?
- This is the kind of player that can make World Of Warcraft very unpleasant. Alas, they abound, especially on open world PvP servers.
  - This troper got so upset with huge numbers of high level Horde constantly Besieging low level Alliance towns (and killing all players and quest givers, and camping the places for hours, and being at all the ones I was at at the time all the time, and receiving no help at all from the high level Alliance players) making it impossible to level on his server that he quit. The first response from my guild when I told them why I was quitting? "Suck less!" The second? "Get to a higher level." Even though not being able to level do to jerkasses was the problem. Face Palm.
  - All the high-level allies were probably too busy ganking at Tarren Mill to help you out.
  - Pv P servers seem to lean towards testerone contest to the point that they either Take It To The Forums flame carnage or vice versa to in-game. Seems like gaming is a serious business.
  - The server Tichondrius is widely known to be the worst in World Of Warcraft, as it is filled to the gills with elitist Pv Per jerks who will actually SCAN YOUR ARMORY PROFILE to make sure you are a seasoned Pv Per. If you aren't? You're blacklisted by all players. Fun does not exist here and so (as the servers motto goes) "Tichondrius is Not For You".
Instant-Message Roleplay has its own breed of the Stop Having Fun Guy. It's the type that. demands a great number of Instant Message boxes be filled per post (this troper has seen one person demand eight every time), and will throw a fit if you do anything under the limit. Most people would be hard-pressed to stretch a single action into three. How they manage to find people to play with is anyone's guess.
- This editor has a problem finding people willing to play with him if they have witnessed him destroying an annoyance at RP combat, by exploitation of a certain rule: in a lot of play-by-post forums or instant messing, you're not allowed to automatically land hits on your opponent (your opponent determines whether the attack hits and how much damage it does; watching an exchange of blows where hits are landed rather than always missed is often the difference between a Role Player and a Roll Player); but if you can catch them when they can't do anything to defend themselves (in the middle of their attack, while they're unconscious, etc.), you're allowed to land non-auto-kill hits. This editor's fighting style involves goading the opponent into making the first move, then trapping their offending limb and breaking it. The problem is that he only ever does this to people who are really annoying, and has a hard time convincing actual roleplayers of this. On the other hand, I've also managed to break some legitimate SHF Gs minds by outclassing their twinked character through physics and the use of soft blocking.
  - This troper has had instances where he would get accused of being a SHFG by doing relatively straightforward things in a fight like... sidestep and kick a bucket of water at someone's face (or whatever the case may be) so that he could either momentarily disable the opponent and get away or just because it was a more visual and inventive way of fighting than hitting each other with big pointy sticks while standing in one place. The accusers, ironically, had characters that could routinely stop most attacks (that weren't absolutely plot related) by (meta-)hand waving and other sorts of twinked out abilities.
  - This troper's been accused of being a SHFG when he wanted to do his own stuff because everybody else would role-play their story arcs in private and expect him to somehow know what happened. (Doesn't help that these were often Important character development or training sequences resulting in a major change.
- AOL. AOL by far has some of the worst "Stop having fun guys" R Pers. The standard fare to RP with anyone is: you must have a well thought out profile (this apparently is the most important thing. Also if it's not schwag and it doesn't have a picture, it's not "well thought out"), can type two full IM boxes consistently, and should have a storyline to play along with (although some offer their own). I don't get what's with the descriptive RP though because this Troper sees it as mostly a time scale issue. Do I spend my 300+ word post describing what happened in 10 seconds, or do I spend it describing what happened in 10 minutes? Most of the time, it's the former since the other player doesn't want you controlling them. And then there's the whole vocabulary thing (calling eyes "orbs" and ears "radars" of all things).
  - There was also a group that booted you out of the room if you didn't RP fast enough, claiming they do a mostly "talking" RP.
  - As far as the words-to-post thing, this troper sees it as a matter of good writing. Lots of adjectives and sentences don't necessarily mean good writing. Still haven't figured the hang up on having pictures (this editor tends to use pictures only when it matches very well with the character) - in one game, this troper finally relented by sending in a completely inaccurate pic... where the characters face was completely obscured (among other things).
- I've attempted to join an IRC RP only to discover that an absence of one week meant my character was no longer viable to play because "anything could have happened to that character and the game world in that one week". I discovered this only after I was gone for a week and a half. What do these people do when someone goes on vacation? Loses internet for a week? et cetera?
  - I once joined an IRC RP and then my dude was entirely left behind within just one day at school.
- IRC R Per here, I can honestly tell you that that is the only case of that I have ever heard in my 5 year or so experience. I RP day to day in about 5 IRC R Ps and I can say that 99% are vastly more friendly than real life "Stophavingfunguys" and center around the fun of roleplaying. Not the winning.
- The trend towards eight-paragraph posts is rather cyclic in chatroom R Ps or other long-running environments. Essentially, after a couple of the line/paragraph-count nazis get well-known, arrogant, and the population as a whole gets sick of them, there's a backlash and people start demanding shorter posts (sometimes to the point of being Scrubs), until more new players filter in from AIM with the expectation that linecount is the measure of a player.
Forum Play-by-posts. Seriously many people require you to have an extreme amounts of actions taken. Of course this may also happen when you are playing numerous characters or Non-player characters at once, which would result in a longer post; but if you have only ONE character, than you MUST match theirs in length and description! Even when you are NOT in control of the environment and therefore have nothing else to describe but your character's actions.
- This troper has been castigated for only describing the actions that the other player characters could actually see, resulting in a significantly shorter post than Tolkeining a single action to 16 lines of descriptions and minor actions. (Especially since he only controlled one character) The result? "YOUR POSTS ARE TOO SHORT!!!!"
- Some people take the "Consent rule" way too bloody seriously. The consent Rule states that if you take an action that requires somebody else's participation and they don't want to, then they don't have to do this. This rule is mostly to keep people from randomly knifing characters or blowing up the room when people were having a friendly conversation. Yet some people took this Consent rule so seriously he got yelled at for trying to reach out to shake someone's hand!!
In Final Fantasy XI, you have meleeburn elitists — players who refuse to get merit points (a form of Level Grinding that involves no actual new levels, which can only be done by characters at maximum level) any other way than in a party with four top-tier DPSers with ninja support jobs (mostly to access the game's most powerful defensive ability), a bard assigned to fetch the enemies, and a red mage who does nothing but heal and Haste, while fighting either Heraldic Imps or Greater Colibri. These tactics fall apart if you try to fight anything stronger, and many find them monotonous compared to the traditional party style. The only real challenge to it lies in keeping up with the rapid pace, and that's only a challenge for the red mage and the bard. Unfortunately, meleeburns are also very effective at raking in merit points, so it's currently nearly impossible to find someone at the top who's not a meleeburn elitist, let alone enough to make a party with. Even though half the jobs in the game don't fit or fit well into a meleeburn, with almost enough variety to make a full traditional party out of.
- The ironic thing here is that there's actually two tiers to this. There are the “weak” people that have to rely on Spongilla Flies/Heraldic Imps, Greater Colibris, or Decorative Weapons because of their relatively lower level and lack of truly dangerous attacks. But if the team is “strong,” it can instead choose to do the more dangerous Mamool Jas or Aw'aerns for significantly better experience per kill. “Strong teams” can still do the former options, but “weak teams” will just end up wiping if they try the latter options.
- Let's not even get started on soloing Black Mages. Granted, BLM soloing is merely a reaction to the meleeburning which is increasingly reaching into lower and lower levels; even the mid-teens now see meleeburn parties. With traditional parties that hinged upon precisely executed skillchains and magic bursts a thing of the past which hardened FFXI vets will speak of as like they were Atlantis or Lemuria, Black Mages have a tough time finding a party. Thus soloing has become the relatively acceptable way to level your BLM from nearly level 21 to 75.
- The problem does not lie with the Stop Having Fun Guys attitude of the players, but the Stop Having Fun Guys attitude of the development team. To finish the job-specific merits for a single job requires up to 740,000 XP. (Contrast that it takes 845,350 XP to level a job from 1 to 75.) A standard XP party will make in the range of 5,000 to 10,000 XP per hour, it will take approximately 74 to 148 hours to fully cap job-specific merits. A decent "melee-burn" party will make at least 20,000 XP per hour, meaning it will take 37 hours to fully cap job-specific merits. Elite "melee-burns" can make up to 35,000 XP per hour. meaning it would take slightly over 21 hours to cap job-specific merits. Mind you, this is for a single job (you can level all 20 jobs to level 75 on one character), and not even all of the merits that one would need to complete that single job; such as weapon merits (210,000 XP), magic merits (210,000 XP), HP or MP merits (300,000 XP), and primary attributes like STR or INT (360,000 XP). (These are more limited than job-specific merits, but you should get the picrure.) These numbers have a severe fun-dampening effect, especially when you consider that you need full merits to not be completely useless against the high-end notorious monsters in the game. (Let's not even get started on Absolute Virtue where you are completely useless no matter how well geared and merited you are.) FFXI might as well have a sign that says "Abandon all fun, ye who enter here" on the title screen. This may seem like Serious Business to some, but it is the nature of end-game for FFXI.
The MMORPG Regnum Online (a realm vs realm based game) has an English server, "Horus," that is rather unpopulated compared to their international server, meaning that there is quite literally under 10 people left to defend a realm during downtime. This leads to a large issue (it was a few months ago, may have been fixed— although I doubt that):
- One realm (Ignis) has "won" the game multiple times by staying up until every other realm is asleep, and then doing a massive Zerg Rush, with 30+ players (most higher levels) blowing through the ~10-15 mid-high leveled people left in both the other realms combined.
  - Then, once there are enough players online to properly fight back, they will spend all day just sitting in their bases so that nobody else can take them. Those involved with both commonly declare this as "tactics," leading to the in-game Memetic Mutation "Quitting your job and dropping out of school are NOT tactics!"
In Phantasy Star Universe, there is a large group of people who will boot you from the party for a number of reasons. Picking up "trash" rare items (Even when there is some value to them)? Not having the right Weapon/Armor element (especially at a low percent)? Having weapons that are not grinded (enough)? Having low Photon Art levels? Daring to not play as the "right" race/class combo, especially as a disadvantaged one (Beast Gunner, Newman Fighter, CAST Techer)? Getting most of the good rares when the setting's on Set Random? Oh Noes! Hell, just being there at the end boxes on missions is a viable reason to be kicked from the party. You don't have to do much to get booted from the party. Sometimes even nothing at all...

Close Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games

Battlefield 2 has a lot of “Pro” gamers, in name only, since most of them at best, may receive some minor sponsorship to run their clan website, forum and server. Anyway, most of these guys are happy to use (or used) exploits like C4 throwing, leading to ludicrous “pro” matches early in the game life which comprised of entire teams taking the special ops kit and only using c4, or plane camping or the grenade launcher jumping exploit (jump in the air, then fire at feet, kills anyone near you but not yourself), or prone jumping/dolphin diving (which made you a near impossible target to hit, but still gave the player perfect accuracy) and often using keyboard macros to achieve these. These same players will then enter a public server and flame anyone who uses whatever the latest “fail weapons” to kill them, ostensibly because it's “lame” or “cheap” or “unskilled.” These “fail” weapons have included the G36e, the Ak 74, the M95 Sniper, rocket launcher, grenade launcher, c4, claymores, the DAO Auto-Shotgun and any vehicle that kills them. So yeah.
- This continued in Battlefield 2142. Though there was a more even balance between wide open vehicle maps and infantry close combat maps throughout the game, many servers tended towards infantry only with the “big three” maps (Cerbere Landing, Belgrade and Camp Gibraltar), most commonly the “big one” (Gibraltar), with some going so far as to have auto-kick scripts to prevent people using the limited selection of vehicle still included in these maps before the options to fully disable them were introduced (again) through patches
If you play random people online in Metroid Prime: Hunters, you're very likely to find players who use no one but Trace, since he can become invisible when idle and is using the sniping weapon, the Imperalist. Since doing a head shot with this weapon is a one-hit kill naturally, players will try to avoid this by going into alt form (example: Samus' Morph Ball) to cover their heads and move faster. Naturally, this kind of player will call that “a n00b tactic”. Pros and non-pros also debate on whether or not glitching yourself into a wall in Combat Hall so you can avoid being seen and hit while still firing at other people is legitimate.
- A good portion of people scoff at anyone who even dares to use Samus, mainly because they think only a Scrub relies on her homing missiles, which are difficult to dodge. However, this argument can be from a scrub as well.
Halo 2. They're the ones that start crying when you suggest playing Swords or Rockets or anything that isn't a team game. Or when you suggest playing on Beaver Creek. They'll generally only play Capture the Flag, on Blood Gulch, with Heavy Weapons.
- Oh. My. God… The insanity goes Beyond The Impossible with some of these people, read the server rules for one of the more... Infamous racing clans. Have you streaked a 2-5 lap lead over every other player since you logged on, but also racked up one or two dozen kills and 'nade flips per game while on foot? “Start racing or be kicked, camper.”
Left 4 Dead. Closet Camping - mention those two words in the Steam forums and things will get ugly. The crux of this issue is the ability for players to use the melee attack constantly and the lack of player clipping to avoid blocking but allows the players to group up in very tight spaces (some call it the 'Shiva formation') and are virtually invincible to everything but the Tank.
- This was corrected in versus by adding melee fatigue, use melee too many times in a row, and you get a cooldown for meleeing, which goes away only if you stop meleeing altogether for a bit. The sequel is reportedly going to fix the problem even more so by fleshing out melee combat with multiple weapons existing specifically for that purpose.
  - Some of the better players take the game extremely seriously. While people do need a good amount of skill to survive the Advanced and Expert difficulties, some players will immediately kill or boot another player from the game if they make just one mistake and/or call them a n00b for not knowing how to play properly. Shown a lot more in VS mode where team members will accuse you of making them lose because of...well, anything. Because of stuff like this, some people get pure joy in making other players rage at their bad game playing.
  - This becomes more apparent when you get scolded or booted from the game for something that could be beyond your control, such as shooting someone by accident as they wander into your line of fire or popping a Boomer that was next to someone as it catches you by surprise.
- Don't forget the autoshotgun! If you pick the assault rifle or (god forbid) the hunting rifle, you're hurting your team so much you may as well be teamkilling.

Close First Person Shooters

Expect to be called a noob for doing... just about anything outside of using the advanced sword cancel techniques with shotguns in the online game GunZ the Duel. Even using the most accurate rifle in the game, you'll be doing nothing but spraying wildly... even after you nail an opponent 14 times in the chest. Using a dagger to knock someone down and shooting them while they're on the ground because they didn't jump out of it? You're being a dagger noob.
- And if you jump out of a dagger user's lunge almost every time, you'll often be called a hacker.
- Don't expect anyone to use any other weapons than the shotgun, machine gun, and the occasional dual revolvers.
  - This Troper has sworn himself to never give up his pistols and kodachis, no matter what.
  - Rifle, Revs, Kodaichi, and E-style (short for European-style and is the "simpler" advanced technique system i.e., anything that doesn't require a glitch in the system to be usable, which is what the sword cancel techniques ARE) is guaranteed to piss the ones that use the sword cancel techniques (called K-Style, or Korean Style.)
S4 League players that use the Cannonade, Counter Sword, or Semi Rifle are often called noobs, since these are safer or easier to aim but less damaging versions of the Rail Gun, Plasma Sword, or Gauss Rifle. They're also powerful tools in their own way — the Counter Sword is usually shunned by Scrubs as being overpowered. The Counter Sword and Rail Gun tend to also be considered unacceptable weapons on the Tunnel v1 map, where they are fun but not a good way to score touchdowns.
- And then there are the 'rawr guns r 4 noobs' players, that insult and abuse anyone who uses anything but melee weaponry ( 2 out of some 20 or so weapons ), the 'LAGGER!' haters, who abuse anyone who tries to play with a poor connection because the game attempts (albeit a bit clumsily) to protect any poor sod whose connection can't give them a perfect uplink. For people defying the games basic premise, these guys (perhaps due to their stupidity) can be unbelievably vicious.
The online Multiplayer mode for SOCOM 3/Combined Assault seems to consist almost entirely of suppression matches on a timer played on Devil's Road, Which is made up of two villages on either side of a lake. The result? Constant sniping, to the point where some servers have every other weapon disabled, and where this isn't the case you will be flamed for using other guns.

Close Third Person Shooters

Sparda have mercy on your soul if you admit to playing Easy Automatic on any Devil May Cry title, for the Dante Must Die-demolishing "pros" will have none.
Defense Of The Ancients, that (in)famous Warcraft III map, has a number of players who despise "noob" and "pubbie" hero and item choices.
If you're not coming within seconds of a world record in Initial D Arcade Stage or Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune, fellow players will think you're So Bad You're Horrible.
Chrome Hounds presents an interesting case— the Scrubs and the Stop Having Fun Guys are both in general control of the online community- and advocating similar messages: Stick Mechs are king, and Base-Dropping means you're a n00b, unless you did so in a Wheelie (God help you if you play like the game advocates instead).

Close Other

Go to any Warhammer 40000 fan forum, and ask about army lists. Note that the most aggressive posts are the guys who are building their armies to play Tournament matches against Space Marine armies (loaded with six-man Las/Plas squads and as many Assault Cannons, a huge Gamebreaker in previous editions, as possible) on tables with no terrain.
- The featureless table is nearly never the case, though, as every force can benefit from terrain features to some extent, and close-combat units and armies, which are extremely common, are effectively unplayable without it. It's for this reason that all 5 editions of the 40K rulebook spend a great deal of time discussing terrain and insisting on its use.
- While most players won't make a big deal about little discrepancies throughout the game, players who haggle over every detail have earned the nickname of “Rules Lawyer.” At the other end of the spectrum however, you have players who will stretch the rules as thin as they can;
War Hammer and War Hammer 40000 are prime wargame examples. Use certain units or make a themed army, even if they're fluffy and fun, and the hardcore grognards will generally lecture on efficiency and effectiveness then probably advise the same cookie-cutter army that other people use to win. Make a wacky paint scheme and get decried by traditionalists. Make an army with a background that doesn't strictly follow established canon (like a loyal Space Marine army that is descended from one of the Traitor Legions) and prepare to be lambasted by canon-is-God players.
- Unless you say you're going back 10,000 years. With the Horus Heresy such a squiggly knot in history with Chaos playing some kind of supremely-advanced Risk, practically anything will go.
- On that last note, tone and background are important factors. Gag armies are typically well-received by good-humoured players (Joycrons◊ being a prominent example), and even in-character for some races (Orks being Orks are known to do all kinds of crazy stuff).
  - That said, however, many gags or attempted combinations (Chaos Tau, for instance) are Berserk Buttons in certain parts of the fandom, and will throw even otherwise normal gamers into SHFG-worthy rages. Ultimately, it comes down to presentation, sensibility, and the type of people you play with.
- Particularly severe example courtesy 4chan: upon hearing someone discussing /tg/ homebrew codexes, more specifically the Angry Marines, a Veteran Sergeant Stop Having Fun Guy duly grabbed the Necron Monolith owned by the hapless gamer and threw it in a dumpster. "Stop having fun, or I'll destroy your stuff."

Close Strategy

Yu-Gi-Oh. If any game can be considered personification of this trope, this would be it. It seems like the majority of duelists who play the game are like this, netdecking like crazy, dismissing cards that aren't Too Awesome To Use as utter crap, and completely willing to rape the 10% of players who only play the game for fun. Flame wars have been started over duelists asking how to make a good Elemental Hero deck (considered So Bad Its Horrible among the elite), with both sides being chewed out as talentless, brainless hacks. Also the Seven Staples (A series of trap/spell(or magic for the purist)/effect monsters) once made even the most fearsome high attack monsters like the blue eyes white dragon useless as they would be decimated the moment they are summoned by a simple pit.
- The seriousness of the fanbase is lampshaded in Yu-Gi-Oh GX, where the main character, Judai, will regularly remind opponents that dueling is supposed to be fun. These people will always act shocked and amazed, believing Judai to be foolish and childish. Naturally, Judai also plays the infamous Elemental Hero deck.
- Hell, it's gotten so bad that even Konami has gotten into the gig; ever since the Envoy Incident, they have become more and more paranoid, either Nerfing just about any card that could've been decently powerful, flooding new sets with inflexible self-contained Theme Deck materials, and/or banning and limiting cards in original but non combat-oriented decks that prove effective or popular, essentially controlling exactly what their fans will play at any given time to what they want them to play.
  - Although in recent sets, Konami has begun releasing cards that are arguably just as broken, such as support for a sub-type that was once underused, and now has some of the most unfair cards in the game. I'm looking at you, Lonefire Blossom. Not to mention the Black Feather series, which are being released around the time of this edit, provide for some of the fastest OT Ks imaginable, being capable of swarming the field, reducing the opponent's strength from anywhere from half to zero, and powering up one's Black Feather monsters to high levels at absolutely no cost. It just goes to show that with Konami, the cards you make are either too bad to use, or to good to enjoy going up against.
Oddly, Magic The Gathering isn't nearly as rigid. Sure, most decks at a professional tournament are “The Best Deck” or “The Deck that Will Usually Beat the Best Deck,” but they will applaud anyone who can win with “tech.” Example: Makihito Mihara won the 2006 World Championship with a combo deck that was certainly a known quantity, but nowhere near the top deck in the field. In the World Championships the next year, after several important cards in Mihara's deck were rotated out of the format, Patrick Chapin and Gabriel Nassif came up with a very similar combo deck and finished 2nd and 3rd, respectively.
- At Pro Tour: San Deigo in 2007, a major two-man team draft tournament was won by an almost-unknown pair of players who exploited a creature's ability to let all its cohorts “poison” the other player. In this format, each team had twice as many life points as a single, but but would still lose after taking the usual amount of poison... meaning these guys surprised the hell out of most of their opponents. Naturally, some bitter detractors called them lucky, and soothed their egos by reminding everybody that this tactic wouldn't work in “real” (i.e. one-on-one duel) games. The rest, however, were humbled at not thinking of it themselves, and took it as a reminder never to rule out any weird or wacky-sounding strategy offhand.
  - It was the green Sliver, wasn't it?
  - Virulent Sliver.
- Magic designers call the players with the “only winning matters” mentality Spikes, in contrast to Timmies (who treat the game as a social outlet and like exciting play with big, impressive effects) and Johnnies (who treat the game as an intellectual exercise and creative medium and like unusual effects that complement each other). The design team generally tries to make sure there's something for each of these three player profiles in every expansion. Note that not all Spikes fall into this trope; see Player Archetypes for details.
- There is, though, a common belief among tourney players that if any card that costs four or more mana doesn't win the game for you on the spot, it should never even be put in your deck, which the more experienced tourney jocks know ain't so and casual players find laughable. The specific quote comes from Zvi Mowshowitz, long time professional magic player; but even he finds the idea laughable nowadays as seen in this article.
- To expand on this point, just because a card has a stated cost doesn't mean you'll pay that much to play it. This Troper has a deck crammed with cards that cost upwards of 6 or even more mana, but will rarely if ever play them from his hand, preferring instead to find ways of shoving them in his graveyard through cards like Entomb or Buried Alive, and then play Dread Return to put them in play. In this way, he has played Reya Dawnbringer (converted mana cost 9) with only 2 lands in play (through judicious use of Dark Ritual).
  - I run into the same issue, I play a similar deck... but with DRAGONS and get chewed out by professional players (and they are) for not coming out with something that can "win".

Close Card Games

Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing

Tools

Toys

Examples: